The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq

A worldwide phenomenon and the most important French novelist since Camus, Michel Houellebecq now delivers his magnum opus–a tale of our present circumstances told from the future, when humanity as we know it has vanished.

Surprisingly poignant, philosophically compelling, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, The Possibility of an Island is at once an indictment, an elegy, and a celebration of everything we have and are at risk of losing. It is a masterpiece from one of the world’s most innovative writers.

Unrated Critic Reviews for The Possibility of an Island

Kirkus Reviews

Daniel 24, then 25, are “neohumans” living—minus tears, laughter, sex and suffering—in the same Spanish compound as their original, with clones of Fox, while hordes of savages (survivors of atomic catastrophes and the Great Dry Up) howl and die outside the protective fence.

The New York Times

Near the end of his by turns bewitching and tiresome new novel, "The Possibility of an Island," Houellebecq's narrator  a middle-aged comedian turned film producer named Daniel  makes the ultimate confession.

The New York Times

Near the end of his by turns bewitching and tiresome new novel, "The Possibility of an Island," Houellebecq's narrator  a middle-aged comedian turned film producer named Daniel  makes the ultimate confession.

The Guardian

It is also the main motor of Houellebecq's narrative and in its absence, his observation, his cumulatively dulling misanthropy sometimes chokes and runs out of gas.There are, particularly in the setting up of Daniel1's involvement with the Elohimites, more than a few longueurs;

Publishers Weekly

Like the New Age camp of The Elementary Particles and the Thai sex tourist hotels of Platform , Houellebecq's latest novel has a self-enclosed setting: the shifting sites at which the Elohimites, a UFO/cloning cult, hold their seminars.

Austin Chronicle

New York Magazine

and the book’s final 40 pages, in which Daniel25, having made contact with a disillusioned female clone and reached the end of Daniel1’s autobiography, abandons his sterile immortality, and on the thread of a hope that real human life could be better than its technologically stripped-down simulat...

New York Magazine

Without belaboring similarities between Houellebecq’s literary stardom (the pre-publicity for this book in France rivaled that of The Da Vinci Code) and Daniel1’s notoriety as a transgressive lounge act, it’s worth noting that Daniel1’s performances sound too witless to provoke the hilarity Hou...